Summary
This game should be taught in schools
The Good
"Ultima IV" created the Ultima series. The first three Ultimas were fine RPGs, but they were quickly overshadowed by similar products of better quality. Crawl through the dungeons, destroy the bad guy - every role-playing series is based on this concept. What has really changed since then? We continue playing role-playing games which are in fact copies of the same principle, with slight variations. And there is nothing wrong with that. But there is one game that doesn't copy this principle, but presents a totally different one. This game is "Ultima IV". This is the only role-playing game known to me that doesn't introduce the concept of a "bad guy". There is no ominous, hostile entity in this game that has to be destroyed in the end. The whole game is dedicated to one hero only - yourself, and the whole quest is not about defeating your antagonist, but about being worthy of the title of Avatar - the incarnation of the Eight Virtues: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Sacrifice, Justice, Honor, Humility, and Spirituality.
Even if "Ultima IV" didn't have anything else to offer but this concept, it would still stay forever in the Hall of Fame of video games. While playing this game, I deeply regretted my discovery of games came so late (The first time I played a video game independently was at the age of seventeen, and it was not until I turned twenty-three when gaming became my "official" hobby). I wonder what would have happened if I had played "Ultima IV" at the time it was released. It would have probably changed me forever. It would have probably had the same impact on me as great works of literature, philosophy, and religious thought, that I discovered much later. I almost feel pity for those who grew up with modern games. The majority of them would probably reject "Ultima IV" as a hopelessly outdated game, graphically and gameplay-wise. And they wouldn't even suspect what they have lost by rejecting it.
I was close myself to rejecting the game. It took me many attempts to start playing "Ultima IV", now in 2004, nineteen (!) years after it was released. Only because I liked so much
Ultima VII and
Ultima IX I decided to play what was considered the first true Ultima and the one who was responsible for the popularity and cult status of the series.
No matter how other Ultima games (earlier or later ones) were, "Ultima IV" sealed forever the reputation of the series as the most unique and noble franchise ever. "We create worlds", says the company Origin, and indeed they created a world - not only a planet or a universe with its own history and geography, but a world of ethics and spirituality manifested through the medium of video games.
"Ultima IV" is a unique game even within the series: the concept of "Quest of Avatar" was a one-time idea. In every next Ultima there was some sort of an opponent to deal with - imaginary or real one, but an opponent that provided the necessary conflict: Blackthorn in
Ultima V, gargoyles in
Ultima VI, the Guardian in the last three Ultimas. You never needed to repeat the quest you once had to complete in "Ultima IV". Even compared to other Ultimas "Ultima IV" stands out as the only example of a
game of virtue.
The main idea of "Ultima IV" is not to tell a story of a highly virtuous person. Any book, movie, or adventure game are theoretically able to do that. What makes the phenomenon of "Ultima IV" truly outstanding is the fact the game's main concept could be expressed
exclusively through the medium of a game. The concept of "Ultima IV" is not to tell a story about a person with a high ethical codex - no, it is to let
you be this person, but not automatically, following the game's one and only story, but through hard work, continuous exploring and searching, continuous thinking, and continuous effort. If it were a book or a movie, "Ultima IV" would not be as special. But being a game, it allows a kind of a "moral simulation", it creates a virtual world where you are not
yet good, but where you can
become good. The whole point of the game and its endless appeal is in its gameplay, that is dedicated to your spiritual path, but can only be viewed in its continuity, gradually developing as the player makes progress in the game, without being "given". "Ultima IV" is one of the very few games who really utilize the potential of the medium.
It also defined the concept of
role-playing. Ninety percent of role-playing games (especially console-style ones) shouldn't in fact be called this way. The idea of true role-playing that was introduced by "Ultima IV" is the possibility to do whatever you like in the game, and to choose your course according to your own will, and not to the ones of game designers. Of course, you
must be good in "Ultima IV", otherwise you won't be able to complete the game - after all, it is named "Quest of the Avatar". But at any given point you have the possibility to choose between the good and the not-so-good way. You will be punished for doing bad things (not by the people in the game, but by the game itself), but you will always be aware of this way. And you'll have to prove your worthiness throughout the entire game. Nothing is sealed when you have completed a game-related task and gained a partial Avatarhood in a virtue. You can lose this Avatarhood very quickly if you don't control yourself and continue to pursue the noble path. This is high-quality role-playing which at the same time possesses a high ethical value.
"Ultima IV" is the only RPG/adventure where gameplay and story are truly inseparable. In other games of this genre, the story is told by the game, while you are trying to trigger its events by completing the game's objectives. No matter the amount of non-linearity and optional ways in a game, it always follows the principle of the gameplay being unrelated to the story and serving as a vehicle to transport you through it. In "Ultima IV", the gameplay
is the story. There is no other story but the one you make while playing the game. You are the one who create this story. Nothing happens in the world of "Ultima IV", you should not trigger any events. Its world is static, and the only thing that changes is you. Your progress through the game is the only story it has - and what a fascinating story it is: a tale of a nameless person who has the possibility to become a moral example to others and the incarnation of the greatest virtues!
The concept of the Eight Virtues is perhaps the most important and memorable aspect of Ultima series, and one of the reasons to its cult status. The Eight Virtues are an ethical codex that is unparalleled not only among other video games, but even among ethical models of the real life. Imagine a set of rules that would match the Buddhist
panchashila or the
ten commandments, and even surpass them in being less concrete and less dependent on local traditions. The Eight Virtues are a complex system that is derived from three basic concepts: Truth, Love, and Courage. All virtues contain one or more of those three (except Humility, the only virtue that is not based on them): Honesty is a virtue of Truth, Compassion is a virtue of Love, Valor is a virtue of Courage, Honor is a virtue of Truth and Courage, Justice is a virtue of Truth and Love, Sacrifice is a virtue of Love and Courage, and Spirituality is the virtue of all three. Only if you follow those eight virtues can you become the Avatar, and serve as a moral example to human beings.
This fantastic concept was created by Richard Garriott (see the trivia section for this game). Although it is quite original and independent, the influence of great moral systems of mankind on it is undeniable. Particularly strong is the influence of India. All virtues have shrines dedicated to them, at which you should meditate and chant corresponding mantras in order to reach enlightenment. This is a typical element of Hindu philosophy, in which spiritual concentration plays a very important role. The term
avatar is a sanskrit word meaning "incarnation of the God". The closest existing system to the Eight Virtues is Buddhism. The parallels are obvious (note the omnipresent number
eight in the game - eight virtues, eight character classes, eight companions; eight is a sacred number in Buddhism, that also has the concept of
eight steps to enlightenment). The most important parallel is the total absence of any supernatural force in both systems and the emphasis they make on the spiritual power hidden within us. Both are religions without gods, where the way to salvation depends only on the human being himself.
This system is present in all Ultimas, but in "Ultima IV" it is present everywhere, it is the quintessence of the story and the core of the gameplay. Beside the usual tasks of finding many items and visiting places where they can be used, your main objective in the game is to prove you are worthy of the title of Avatar. Before you start the game, you have to create your character - the famous Ultima character creation (that was sadly omitted in
Black Gate and
Pagan, but came back in
Ascension). The character creation is in fact a series of morally ambiguous questions, that present a conflicting aspect of the Eight Virtues. The questions themselves are masterfully posed, and make every player reflect upon his own moral values. For example: you fight against your mortal enemy, are able to disarm him, and now he is at your mercy. Do you slay him or spare his life? This is a conflict between Valor and Compassion. Another example: your lord believes he was the one who vanquished a powerful dragon, yet you know it was your strike that brought the victory. Do you tell the truth or do you prefer not to hurt the feelings of your liege? This is a conflict between Honesty and Sacrifice. In the end, the virtue you choose most determines the character class you start with, since each class is associated with a certain virtue: Bard with Compassion, Druid with Justice, Fighter with Valor, etc.
You start the game with a perfectly mediocre score. You are an average person, neither a villain nor a moral example. But as you play the game, you discover everything you do has an influence on you as a potential Avatar - or a potential scoundrel. At first sight, you are in a typical RPG world where you can hack monsters, loot chests, and do all the usual things. But if you really want to become an Avatar, you have to follow the spiritual way of the Eight Virtues. Sure, you can just open any chest in any city and take the treasure inside, but your Honesty will suffer. You can run away from fights, but then you lose your Valor. You can backstab fleeing animals like snakes or spiders, but that won't do well to your Compassion. The game allows you to behave the way you like, and it is through
understanding of the eight virtues that you will eventually come to Avatarhood, and not because the game dictates it to you. You have to play the game a lot in order to understand that it reflects everything you do. You can kill children on the streets, but don't expect the game to ignore it. Only if you excel in all eight virtues will you be able to become an Avatar and to complete the game. The game is a barometer of your morality, and it doesn't punish you in a primitive way, sending guards to capture you - no, it makes you understand that you are doing something opposite to the very essence of the game, that you actually
are not playing it by doing those things. It treats you with justice and punishes you, yet it also forgives you and gives you an opportunity to correct the wrong you have done. This is the greatness of "Ultima IV" - the game is a judge who is himself true to the noble path of the Eight Virtues.
The quest of an Avatar is anything but easy. The game makes you work hard in order to become virtuous - just like in real life, it cannot be achieved immediately, and the path of virtue is hard to follow. Many times you'll be tempted to get all the treasure that is scattered around the towns, to underpay a blind reagent seller, to talk proudly to people, to neglect meditation and spiritual exercises, or to flee from a battle when you don't feel like fighting. It will be a long time until the game will recognize you as a worthy Avatar. Giving one time a golden coin to a beggar or medidating one time at a shrine won't bring you the perfect score in Compassion and Spirituality. You'll have to do many good deeds, and use every opportunity to become a better person.
While you are pursuing the quest of an Avatar, you'll visit many towns and villages, explore many forests and dungeons, and sail on a boat to discover mysterious islands. The game is absolutely open-ended and totally unlinear. You have a set of objectives to complete (which you learn very gradually, after continuous talking to people), but you decide in which order to complete them. From the start of the game, you can go wherever you like. The moongates connect most important location of Britannia; others can be accessed by capturing a boat from pirates (who can often be seen sailing along the coast of the mainland, south of the capital city Britain) or by using the Blink spell. The huge game world is there for you to explore, and you'll
have to explore it thoroughly in order to visit all the important locations and to find all the necessary items. There are always some well-hidden and even seemingly inaccessible locations that will challenge your imagination and will make you want to explore more. There are no other events in the game but those you make happen and that bear importance to you (like getting a partial Avatarhood in one of the virtues, finding one of the eight Stones of Virtue, etc.). But although there is no exterior story in the game, the inner story of your quest is as fascinating to follow as the most interestingly written plots.
So far, the unique aspects of "Ultima IV". As I said, those would be enough to make the game an object of cult. But surprisingly enough, "Ultima IV" contains plenty of good old traditional RPG elements, some of which are brilliantly executed. The battle system is very simple, yet it is one of the most efficient and entertaining ones I saw in RPGs. The battles take place on a battlfield on which you can move freely. The battles are turn-based, but very quick-paced, since magic doesn't play a very important role in combat, and you'll be mostly attacking physically, which is possible just by typing the letter A and the direction you want to attack. Mostly you'll be fighting against large groups of enemies, with several types of them attacking together. The terrain of the battlefields is one of the things that make those battles so fun. Each terrain is unique: if you are fighting in mountains, you'll have to fight on narrow pathes which are often blocked by impassable rocks; if you are fighting near a swamp you'll have to deal with poison fields that are scattered around. Particularly inventive are the battlefields of the dungeons. All battlefields in the dungeons are different, and all have their particular design: some have lava fields that inflict damage on you, some have lightning fields you have to dispel in order to attack the enemy hiding behind them, others have hidden switches you have to pull in order to reveal a secret exit.
The dungeons of "Ultima IV" are complex and tricky to navigate: you have false walls, seemingly impassable rooms, dead ends, traps, various energy fields, fountains that either heal or poison you, secret doors, pits, winds that extinguish the light of your torch, sudden monster attacks, magic orbs that increase your stats at the cost of your HP, and other interesting things.
There are a lot of interesting magic spells to learn and to use in "Ultima IV". By reading the Book of Mystic Wisdom that comes with the game you can learn about the effect of the spells and the reagents needed to cast them. You can't just cast spells in the game: you have to buy (or find) the necessary reagents and to mix them together to create a spell unit. This unique magic system was implemented in all later Ultimas and is one of the series' trademarks.
There are some very interesting touches of interactivity realism in the game, that were further developed in later Ultimas. You should have a supply of rations, otherwise you and your party members will starve. You have to light torches in dark dungeons. There are some really cool elements, like ship-to-ship battles against sea monsters and pirate ships, or balloon flight.
Be sure to apply the VGA/MIDI patch to the original game (see trivia and links sections of this game entry). It enhances the game enormously, and the main reason for that is the addition of music. The VGA graphics are nice, but in the eyes of today's players there isn't much difference between them and the original EGA graphics (except some really great pre-rendered pictures that appear every time you gain a partial Avatarhood, and also in the end of the game). The addition of MIDI music, however, eliminates the only true downside of the PC version of the game - lack of music. The music is taken from Commodore and Amiga versions of the game. It is delightful, as always in Ultima games.
The Bad
This game was made at a time when games were few and much less popular among broad masses, where most gamers were considered freaks and gaming was still not recognized by many as a "legitimate" form of art and entertainment. Regardless to its superb qualities and its unique concept, "Ultima IV" is a child of its time. It was made nineteen years ago, and it was made according to a totally different set of rules than the ones used now. Now, gaming is a huge industry, a mass production, an entertainment branch that tries to attract and conquer masses of people. Most game designers try to make the player feel comfortable while playing their games, and concentrate on user-friendly gameplay, visual effects, and various gameplay gimmicks. Back in the eighties, games were more humble, but demanded much more attention. From the point of view of many players who grew up with the psychology of modern games, "Ultima IV" is outdated. It has nothing of the user-friendliness of modern games. It requires you to explore its world and to understand its gameplay mechanics all by yourself. And the tasks it presents are possible to complete only if you are willing to dedicate an enormous amount of time to it.
As there is no actual plot line to follow, other than your constant struggle to become a better person, there is nothing in the game that will reward you other than the satisfaction of slowly becoming an Avatar. The world of the game is static. Nothing changes after you have become an Avatar; even Lord British doesn't say anything except his usual standard greeting. You are alone in the game. Your party members don't talk from the moment they join you, and are far from being the graceful companions of later Ultimas. The people in towns have only a couple of simple phrases to tell you, and most of the time will react with "I can't help thee with this" to your attempts of communication.
You won't get many clues in this game. You have to find many important items, but if you don't ask around, there is no way to know you will even need them. Once you learn that you will need them indeed, you'll have to spend more time talking to people and trying to meet someone who might know where they are. Since the world is very large, and there is no linear story to guide you, the only guarantee of a successful completion of the game is tedious asking every person in every town about everything, and meticulous searching. Important items don't even appear as items - you have to search empty spots for them, hoping to find something. For example, if a person tells you that the Silver Horn can be find on a certain group of islands, you have to search every spot on every one of those islands - you won't get a more exact clue. The system of getting clues from conversations is extremely tiresome and requires endless, monotonous repetition of keywords. Chances are you'll have to talk to every person in every town several times. For example (this is not an actual clue from the game), you hear from a wise man in Moonglow that certain stones are needed to complete your quest. Then you keep asking mentioning "stone" to all the people you've already spoken to. You then finally learn from a ranger in Skara Brae that a certain child in Paws knows whom to ask about the location of the white stone. You hurry to Paws, and the child points to somebody in Serpent Castle. In the end, you get a clue about one of the stones, which is always too vague and indirect. "The stone X is in dungeon Despise!" Yes, but where
is dungeon Despise? And so on, and so on. If you are not willing to use a walkthrough, prepare to spend some time with this game.
There are some less significant problems related to the actual gameplay, especially concerning your progress on the path of an Avatar. Some of it might seem a bit unnatural and forced. Once you get familiar with the "virtue-raising" mechanics, the process gets too elementary and you start having a feeling you are cheating. For example, you learn from the Seer than donating your blood will increase your Sacrifice. Since there is a very comfortable way to donate blood right in Lord British' castle, where you can always get healed, it is easy to figure out you don't even need to leave the castle in order to reach the highest level on Sacrifice.
The obvious downside of the PC version is the lack of music. I suggest either playing the Commodore or Amiga versions, or downloading the great VGA/MIDI patch I mentioned above.
The Bottom Line
If I ever have children, I would want them to play "Ultima IV". To show them the greatness of a game that was made many years ago and has since then became a legend. To explain to them the meaning of role-playing and of gaming in general. To share with them the joy of adventure and exploration. And then who knows, maybe they will also want to step on the difficult and noble path of the Avatar.
